Ithala Bank: separating fact from fiction about its founding

IN THE absence of truth, lies often flourish.

- MBULELO BALOYI

AS EXCITEMENT grows over FNB's guarantee for Ithala Bank depositors to access their funds, just in time for Christmas, following an almost year-long limbo, the writer uncovers the true founding timeline of South Africa's Ithala Bank, challenging the widespread misconception that it was established by Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi in the 1950s. Discover the actual evolution from the Bantu Investment Corporation to today's financial institution against the backdrop of South Africa's complex political history.

(I DOCTOR NGCOBO Independent Newspapers)

Ponder Ithala Bank, which is regularly in the news and dominates contemporary conversations these days.Word has it that the state-owned Ithala Bank was founded by the late Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi in the 1950s. That is a gross blue lie.

The genesis of Ithala Bank SOC was in 1983 or 1984. Unfortunately, the bank's own website is also peddling this lie of the 1950s.

Below is the brief evolution of Ithala Group as a Finance Development Institution (FDI), just like your Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), National Empowerment Fund (NEF) of Sydney Maree fame and scandal and other FDIs like the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and Business Partners, formerly known as Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC).

All the aforementioned FDIs are statutory bodies founded by the preand post-1994 governments.

Ithala could not have been founded by Inkosi Buthelezi in the 1950s, as he had not even ascended to the Chief Minister position of the then-Bantustan homeland of the KwaZulu Government.